Early Movie Theaters—Elkton and Chesapeake City (Part 2)

Early Movie Theaters—Elkton and Chesapeake City (Part 2)

 

Masonic Hall during the 1914 flood, with the Chesapeake City jail just to its left

Silent Movies—Chesapeake City

John Sager of Chesapeake City had detailed recollections of the Masonic Hall movies. “My father, Jay Sager, ran the projector for the silent movies, he and Frank Filligame,” he explained. “That was back in the Twenties—all through the Twenties, in fact. We’d walk across the Long Bridge to the Masonic Hall and go up the steps to the second floor. The Masons had their lodge hall on the third floor.

“The theater and stage were on the second floor. The room had two posts running down the center to hold the building up. The screen was set up at the back of the stage and there were no permanent seats; chairs had to be set up in rows. The dressing rooms were on each side of the stage. I remember them because I once acted in a minstrel play that was held there. My grandmother, Stella Sager, and I used to take care of sweeping and cleaning up the Hall. I remember, as a little boy of ten, looking all around the floor for peanuts … ones that weren’t cracked! She and I also used to set up the chairs just before the movie started. Granny really did a lot of stuff over there.

“The projector was in a booth at the back of the room on the right-hand side. It didn’t have a bulb to produce the light. Instead, it had electrodes made out of carbon. I believe the device was called an arc light, which is similar to electric arc welding. The carbons would burn down occasionally and would have to be replaced. It would get really hot in that little room, so the room had to be covered with sheets of asbestos so that if something caught fire it wouldn’t spread beyond that room. We always hoped that my father could get out of there in time if it did start burning.

“My mother and Mrs. Filligame sold tickets from a little booth that was there as you walked up the stairs. Sometimes local boys would hang around and Mother would let them in for free and, when they counted the tickets afterwards, there’d be more people than there were tickets. I think the tickets were twenty five cents. My father and Filligame got the money. Generally, they showed the movies twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday evenings at seven. The films were shipped to Elkton and sent down to Chesapeake City on the mail bus.

“There was only one projector, and when the reel ran off we had to wait until my father put the next reel on and started it up again. The audience would get anxious, a little rowdy you know, waiting for the show to continue. They would stomp their feet, yell, and so forth. Frank Filligame took care of any roughness or fights that sometimes took place. I remember one of the fights. Old man Bill Stubbs always came down and sat in the chair by the first post that was in the middle of the floor; it was always his seat. Well, one evening somebody got in there and got seated in his seat, and Stubbs got to fighting the guy. So Frank had to come and break it up.

“The films were about cowboys and Indians mainly and, of course, they were all silent movies with sub-titles. I remember some of the actors: Tom Mix, Hurricane Hutch, and Mary Pickford. Now, the talkies came later and were shown in Stubbles’ Rio Theater. My father ran the projector for him for a while. When the talkies first came out, they had a record of the talking; the operator had to synchronize the picture with the talking, and sometimes the track would get off so that the talking didn’t fit the picture.”

Frances McCoy Williams had vivid memories of watching the silent movies there as well.  “Every Saturday night they had the movies upstairs. I recall the folding chairs and how all the young people sat up front while the older people, including my grandmother, sat in the back. My grandmother loved the movies. When we watched a movie, every so often they had to change reels, and that was when the young boys got to carrying on, throwing peanut shells at the girls and hooking their feet under their chairs and so forth. Once a year Chautauqua came to the Masonic Hall. It was a traveling theater from one of the New England states, and they would put on a live play.”

          Delaware City resident, Charles Crompton, recalled walking up and down the old Chesapeake City causeway to the Hall. “That’s where we saw all the cowboy shows when I was a kid. I remember the old American Store on the corner across from the Hole-in-the-Wall. The Showboat used to dock nearby, and, boy, for two or three weeks in the summertime that floating theater would be filled with people. I went to many a show aboard her.”